Daryl paused and looked at her mother, a stricken expression in her eyes.
“No!” she said shortly. “Harold isn’t coming.”
“Why, what do you mean, dear? Why isn’t he coming? How did you find out?”
“He telephoned!” answered the girl shortly. “He’s going somewhere else! His boss invited him and he thought he ought to go.”
There wasn’t a particle of expression in her face, just that stricken look in her eyes. It seemed as if she had come a long way and got used to the barrenness of it, since she knew.
But the mother’s voice was all compassion and disapproval.
“He went somewhere else when he had promised to be with us! When he knew how much you had counted upon it? He deliberately did that and didn’t let you know till the last minute?” Her eyes were flashing indignation.
But Daryl’s voice was cool, as if she had prepared herself for this. As if these words were some that she had been feeding to her disappointed heart for several hours.
“I don’t know that he deliberately did it,” said Daryl with something hard in her tone. “It seems the other party just happened along, and he was swept with the tide.” There was something almost contemptuous in the way she said it. Her mother gave her a quick, keen look. Did that mean that her girl had been suddenly disillusioned? No, nothing so final as that. A real disillusionment clears the sky usually and heals the hurt. Still this thing, whatever it was, had only just happened.
“My dear,” said her mother tenderly, hesitantly, “don’t make the mistake of being too hard on him. There may be more to it than appears on the surface. You must be fair to people. And then you know the storm is really very bad! Anyone would be excused for not going far in it.”
“It’s not so bad but that my brother went out in it, is it?” said Daryl, and now her voice was really bitter.
“Yes, but there was a very serious reason.”
“Well, isn’t a girl—a girl one is supposed to—care for, a serious reason? If she isn’t, then what is she? Why should she bother?”
Her mother looked at her for a long moment and then she said slowly, thoughtfully, “Well, I sometimes wonder!”
Then she roused herself and looked pitifully toward her child.
“Don’t worry about it, dear! You know it may come out all right in the morning! He may turn up bright and early when the storm is over.”
Daryl looked at her mother gravely.
“That’s nice of you, Mother, when you don’t really like him. I appreciate it, but it wouldn’t make any difference if he did. The damage is done.”
“But Daryl, dear! That’s not fair to him! You mustn’t be unforgiving. And besides, when he explains—”
“He couldn’t explain it all,” said the girl with tears in her voice. “He’s spoiled Christmas, that’s all, and it can’t be fixed up. You don’t understand, I know, and I don’t want to talk about it tonight. But Christmas is spoiled.”
“One man can’t spoil Christmas, Daryl! That isn’t possible. Christmas is bigger than that. It is something heavenly and cannot be touched by things of the earth. My child, have you been thinking to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ by arranging circumstances around yourself like cushions and settling down comfortably in them? And remember this, too, dear, if this friendship with Harold Warner is something that God has planned to crown your life with joy, nothing, not even a storm, nor some little lack of thoughtfulness, nor even some strong chain of circumstances can stop it. Not if it is of God! So you can safely trust your happiness with Him, who knows the end from the beginning. And if this friendship is not of God, Daryl, you wouldn’t want to try to get happiness where God had not planned if for you, would you?”
“I suppose not,” said Daryl tonelessly.
“Well then, dear, can’t you just take it all and lay it in His hands and trust your happiness with Him?”
Daryl didn’t answer quickly. Then she said slowly, wearily, “Yes, Mother, but somehow I can’t quite sense it tonight! I’m just awfully—shocked—I guess it is.”
“But my dear!” said her mother, “aren’t you making a great deal out of his not coming tonight?”
“No, Mother!” The answer was grave and decided. Her mother looked at her puzzled.
“Where is he, dear?”
“At Bayport!”
“At Bayport! But that isn’t twenty miles away!”
“I know,” said Daryl significantly.
“What’s he doing there?”
“He’s at a house party! His boss’s daughter invited him.”
“And didn’t invite you?”
“Yes, she invited me after a fashion—I guess! He said she said I might come, too. She sent word for me to take a taxi and come over!”
“My dear! And didn’t Harold even suggest coming after you?”
“Oh, in a way. But as if I would go away from our Christmas and you for any party with a lot of strangers! Our Christmas!”
“But my dear,” said her mother anxiously, “if Harold is there?” She ventured fearsomely: “You know if you don’t feel that way about him there is certainly something wrong.”
Daryl faced about to the window and stared into the storm, saying nothing, her very back eloquent of distress.
Then the mother spoke again.
“You know unless you can be happy anywhere just because he is there, he ought not to be anything to you but a casual acquaintance. Something is wrong somewhere, dear.”
But Daryl stood motionless, frozen into the very personification of sorrow. Then suddenly she spoke quickly, as if the words were drawn from her agonized heart by a force she could not resist.
“I guess there is, Mother. I guess that must be what’s the matter!”
Her voice was quivering and full of tears.
Then the mother went swiftly and gathered her girl into her arms and drew her face close to hers!
“My precious child!” she murmured softly in her ear, “God has been very good to you to let you find it out before it was too late!” And she laid her soft lips on Daryl’s hot quivering eyelids and kissed away the tears that came slipping out in spite of the girl’s bravest efforts.
Just a moment they clung together and the tears had their way, and then they heard Father Devereaux and Ruth coming from the kitchen where the last rites of the supper dishes had been performed. Father was calling them.
“Mother! Daryl! Where are you? Ruth and I have got the work all done, and now we want to keep holiday. This is Christmas Eve you know, and we mustn’t have long faces when the boys get back. Is everything ready to welcome them?”
Daryl sprang away from her mother’s arms and up the stairs, calling as she went, “Yes, Father, I’ll be down in just a minute. I want to tidy up my hair a little!”
But the mother went and sat in the big chair at the side of the fire where her face would be in shadow and tried to take this great thing which her child had told her, conscious that it might be God’s way of answering her own agonized prayers about this friendship her girl had formed with the attractive young man of the world. Conscious, too, that it might mean a broken heart for her pearl of a girl. Gladly conscious, too, that Daryl’s lips had responded lovingly, almost hungrily to her own kiss. Oh, her dear girl! To think a thing like this had to come to her to mar this Christmas that had meant so much to them all. To think her girl had to be entangled in a heartbreak. Dear God! Peril, peril, peril, everywhere! Storm for her boy out there in the snow on the mountain. And storm for her girl in the quiet home with the Christmas lights burning and the home stage set for joy! Sin in the world and heartbreak and storm! And she had somehow dreamed that her children were to be exceptions to the general rule of life, and would not have to pass such terrible testings!
Then Ruth came and settled down at the piano, touching the keys lightly, playing sweet Christmas music: “Oh, Holy Night,” “Angels of Jesus,” “While shepherds watched their flocks by night.” Ruth claimed she was n
ot much of a player, but the notes seemed fairly to sing the words that night, and presently Daryl came with her violin and stood in the shade of the tree, with her back to the lights, and drew tender strains from her fine old violin. Then Father hummed softly, and Mother murmured a note or two now and then, and watched her girl furtively. What had happened to Daryl? Something more than what she had told, she was sure. It would not be like Daryl to make so much of the mere fact that Harold had not come through all that storm. There was something behind it yet that she did not understand.
But wasn’t it enough that Daryl seemed to be somewhat disillusioned? Did she dare rejoice in that? Fearfully she thought over all Daryl’s vague answers to her questions, and trembled on her border of relief, not daring to hope it would be permanent. Yet why could she not just rest back and trust and leave her child in God’s hands? Why did she have to suffer these ups and downs, these fears and brief reliefs and fears again? “Oh, it must be lack of faith. ‘According to your faith be it unto you.’ Oh, Lord, increase my faith! Lord, give me more faith!”
But if it should be that her girl was to be released unhurt from this unfortunate friendship she had regarded with such dread, what joy it would be.
The clock struck ten, and still they sang on, each one furtively watching the windows, listening through the sighing of the wind for sounds of the two wanderers returning.
When the clock struck eleven Mrs. Devereaux got up with an air of going about something she had planned.
“Where are you going, Mother?” asked Father Devereaux calmly.
“Yes, where are you going, Mother?” they both looked fearfully toward the windows.
“Why, I’m just going out to light my oven,” she said cheerfully, as if she hadn’t a thought otherwise. “I thought it was about time to put in some potatoes to bake. The boys ought to be getting home in a few minutes now, don’t you think?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Father in a slow, leisurely tone, “perhaps it’s a little soon, isn’t it? Won’t it be time enough to put their supper on when they get here? They’ll have to clean up a little, you know.” Although everyone knew perfectly well, having worked it all out in their anxious minds over and over again, that if the boys had made as good time getting down the mountain as they made going up they ought to have been here two good hours ago. However, they were all united in pretending to believe that it wasn’t reasonable to expect them yet.
Mother Devereaux listened respectfully to her husband and then she smiled and said, “Well, it won’t do any harm to have my oven hot.” So she hurried into the kitchen. And if she lingered before she lighted the oven to kneel by her work chair in the dark corner of the kitchen and pray for her girl, and her boy, and the stranger who was out in the storm with her boy, no one but God knew. She came back into the living room just as quietly and calmly as she had gone and sat down to listen to the singing again.
But when the song was finished Father said, “It’s Christmas Eve, Mother! Girls! Don’t you think we ought to be planning where to hang the stockings? How would it be if I were to put up six hooks around the fireplace to hang them on? There’s always so much fuss getting them hung, and the boys will be tired when they get in. Daryl, you and Ruth get the stockings together and sew some tapes or something on them to hang them by. Get one of Lance’s for the stranger, and have it all ready. He’ll probably be shy about producing his stocking. He won’t likely be prepared for that ceremony among strangers.”
“Oh, you think the stranger will stay all night, do you?” asked Ruth with a hint of dismay in her voice.
“Well, I don’t see how he could well help it, do you, seeing the morning isn’t so far away, and his car is broken down and has been hauled down to the village garage? I don’t suppose he’d feel quite like starting out again so soon on foot.”
Daryl whirled around and stared thoughtfully at her father, and then looked dubiously toward her mother.
“What about something to fill his stocking?” she asked, aghast.
“Oh, that’ll be easy enough. We’ll hunt around and find some little things. You might be thinking about it now. It’ll help fill up the time while we’re waiting.”
Brave Father, keeping up the courage of his little frightened woman household.
“What about Harold? You say he can’t get here, daughter?”
“No! He’s not coming!” Daryl spoke sharply. “Of course! We can give him Harold’s things! I hadn’t thought of that!” She said it in a matter-of-fact tone that did not deceive her mother, although it fell right in with what her father, bless his man soul, had been thinking.
“Why, sure! Of course that’s the solution if you think they’ll be appropriate. Well, I’ll just slip out to the barn and see how Chrystobel and the hens are doing. I don’t know but I ought to take the oil stove out there and light it. Lucky the kitchen shed opens into the barn, and I don’t have to bundle up to go outdoors. I know Mother here would raise the roof if I did.” He turned a nice old grin toward his wife, and not one of his adoring women was in the least deceived. They knew he was going out to look at the storm, and see what was the prospect of the wanderers reaching home. He put on his overcoat surreptitiously, too, and they heard him stamping into his galoshes, but they pretended not to hear while they bustled about getting stockings together and sewing loops on them. It was clever of Father Devereaux to think of that to occupy their time during that anxious waiting.
The little stir and bustle of everyday duties, no matter how trivial and unnecessary, was a relief, the running up and down stairs for stockings and searching for scissors and thimbles and needles and tape. And where was the thread? Not in its drawer in the sewing table. Oh, in the kitchen where Mother had it sewing up the vest of the turkey! A little laugh ringing out bravely was managed now and then, just as if everything was quite normal and natural, and those two weren’t out there in the storm at least two hours overdue. Oh, God! Aren’t You guiding them? Aren’t You going to answer our prayers?
Daryl’s heart cried out now and then in anguish. It seemed that everything had come upon her at once, and her life was ruined forever, yet as the hours went by and Lance did not return, his absence overtopped everything else. Her mind went back to the sane early fundamental things of her life, and the safe sweet home things. And if anything should happen to Lance, how could life go on! Gradually her other anguish, the one that when it first smote her seemed to her the most terrible sorrow that could ever come to her, seemed less important, a thing to shrink from, to keep from thinking about, but not to compare with her anxiety about her brother, which grew from minute to minute until somehow his peril seemed hopelessly her fault, though she knew it was not.
So she sewed tapes with trembling fingers on a pair of long stockings of Lance’s. They had bright red and orange and green stripes around them, and he never wore them because they were so loud. She made silly jokes about them, whether they would fit the stranger, as she talked in a high, unnatural voice, and tried not to look out the window nor hear the wind howling, tried not to see how fast the clock was racing. Near midnight now, almost Christmas morning, and the storm was worse than ever! Would her bright strong brother never come again?
But the mother in the shadows of the kitchen arose from her knees and went and stirred the soup. And the father coming in with a halo of snow around his white hair sang softly, clearly, with his sweet old voice:
“God’s way is the best way,
God’s way is the right way,
I’ll trust in Him always,
He knoweth the best.”
“I’ve made the coffee,” said his wife. “They ought to be here soon now, don’t you think, Father?”
“Yes, soon now,” said the old voice hopefully.
“Girls, have you got those stockings ready to hang?” called the mother. “Then you’d better come out here and get the bread and butter and things on the table. It won’t be long before the potatoes are done, and the boys will be hungry when they
get here!”
Daryl cast a frightened look at the clock. Three minutes to twelve, and Christmas morning would be here. Six hours the two had been out in the storm! It didn’t seem as if there was a particle of hope that they could ever get home alive! Lost in the snow on the mountain! How could Mother bear it? How would they dare to tell her? She with her faith so bright and strong! Her coffee was sending out its savory odor. And there was a sweet homely smell of roasting potatoes, with their skins all brown and crusty!
The girls put the finished stockings in a pile and gave one look at each other, and then at the clock again. They had white lips and wide sorrowful eyes!
It was just at that moment that two figures, one half bearing the other, staggered, almost fell, struggled painfully on again into the area where the Devereaux gate had formerly been located, and two wavering flashlights searched the white impenetrable gloom.
The girls paused in the living room doorway, instinctively catching each other’s hands as they heard the clock give the preliminary whirr to striking the midnight hour, and then because it seemed something crucial, they stood still and watched it strike. One! Two! Three! So slowly and deliberately. It seemed to be striking on their hearts! It seemed like the tolling of a death knell instead of the ushering in of a joyous Christmas morning! They would never forget it. Nine! Ten! Eleven! Tw-el-ve!
Its last whirr blended with the roaring of the wind that seemed like the groping of a desperate hand outside beating and clutching for the doorknob. Then suddenly the side door of the sitting room burst open, and the two figures slipped, struggled, and fell headlong into the room, bearing the whole outside storm with them, cold and snow and bitterness! A glad wicked gale mocked them saying, “Here I’ve come back again! You thought you could keep me out, but I’m here!” And it swirled around the room, and hissed its hate against the hot oven door in sharp stinging snow; it slapped Mother Devereaux in the face, taking away her breath, and flung upon the two girls in the doorway clutching hands and looking with frightened eyes at the two who had fallen on the floor. Then it whirled into the living room and raced with wicked glee into every cranny, billowing out the delicate muslin curtains at the windows and the heavy draperies at the doors, swaying the crystal prisms on the candle sconces over the mantel, and tilting the Christmas tree irreverently, then rushed around again into the kitchen wildly. Until the strong old arms of Father Devereaux drew the two men inside and with a mighty effort closed and bolted the sturdy door.